Friday, 28 October 2011

Progress (at last) at secret saffron location!

I had almost given up hope that the saffron crocuses which I planted on the allotment would come to anything, but look what I found this week! After many fruitless inspections I was reluctantly concluding that they must have rotted or been eaten (there were a number of suspicious, rat-sized holes nearby…). I had left this patch of ground pretty much undisturbed as I wasn't really sure what the emerging leaves were going to look like, and suddenly there it was, in all its glory. My first Saffron Crocus.

Sadly I was not there in the pre-dawn darkness, armed with a pair of tweezers to extract the stamen before the sun rose. That, I understand, is the correct harvesting technique for these beauties. But I did very carefully weed around it and I can report that there are a number of others which are about to flower. Now all that remains is to harvest, collect and dry our very own Lincolnshire Saffron.